Jennifer Whitmore (Wicklow, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

I am glad the Minister is back in the Chamber because I want to take a moment to congratulate him and his political staff and the civil servants and NGO representatives who accompanied him to COP27 on the work they did. In particular, I congratulate him on his role as the lead EU negotiator during the negotiations regarding the loss and damage fund. It was meaningful work and it deserves recognition.

COP27 and the commitments made there, especially those relating to the loss and damage funding, are welcome, but the loss and damage fund is only one part of a complex issue. Developing nations do not just need us in the EU to write them a cheque when we cause irreparable damage to their lived environment through our consumption of fossil fuels; they need us not to inflict that irreparable damage in the first instance. Our responsibility for the devastating effects of climate change goes far beyond loss and damage funds. We need, throughout the EU, systemic change in how we consume energy, travel and farm, and that includes here in Ireland. System-wide change is the only way we are going to reduce our carbon emissions to levels that will allow us the time we need to reduce global warming and to get climate change under control.

We know what this will look like. We need to invest heavily in solar and offshore wind energy and to incentivise behavioural change by making travelling on public transport the best option for everybody, including communities outside our major urban centres, that is, those in towns and villages. We need to increase our spending and get serious about biodiversity conservation because that issue and climate change need to be addressed in parallel and tackled together. To that end, I welcome the outcome of the Citizens' Assembly on Biodiversity Loss at the weekend and the work it has also done in that area. I hope we will see a much greater focus on biodiversity conservation over the coming months and years.

The leadership the Minister gave at COP27 needs to be mirrored by what happens domestically here and as it stands, the report card on the Government's measures to meaningfully tackle climate change is not good. We need to recognise the reality, namely, that Ireland’s emissions increased last year. Our activity was greatly reduced by Covid at that time, yet we still managed to increase our emissions. Ireland has the second highest carbon emissions per capitain the EU, and no targets set by the Government have yet been met. We will not be judged by the number of targets that have been set; instead, generations will judge us on meeting those targets. While it might be nice, therefore, to make big announcements about proposed reductions on carbon emissions from behind a podium, if the Government consistently fails to meet those targets, at best it will look as though it was unable to get them done, while at worst it will have been just telling people what they wanted to hear and hoping they would not notice when it did not deliver.

I hate being cynical when it comes to environmental and climate work but after so many years of false starts and failures to reduce carbon emissions, it is difficult to be but a little cynical. I worked for 20 years in environmental science and 15 years ago, I worked in New South Wales in what was then called the greenhouse office, where we worked on climate adaptation measures. I have seen up close the impact climate change and pollution are having on our environment and our communities and it has been difficult, having had that experience, to come into politics, where we do not see the immediacy of the response that is needed or the immediacy of delivery. I am trying not to be cynical and to give constructive criticism because, as I said, we need the Minister's Government to deliver on these matters.

As always on climate, Ireland talks the talk and at COP27, the Minister was tasked with walking the walk. He did that, but I am asking him to walk the walk at home as well, which means delivering on all the targets, actions and policies he has committed to over the past two and a half years. At the weekend, he spoke about a solar revolution and on expanding the delivery of solar within this country, which was welcome, but we need to see how the Government is going to achieve that. A few months ago, coming up to the budget, we heard about a rooftop revolution, but I have not heard anything about it since. I asked how large a budget was being assigned to that but I do not think any money was assigned to it. There did not seem to be a plan. I hope all this talk from last week will not end up similarly as just sound bites and not actions, because we need action. We in the Social Democrats have put forward a feasible, pragmatic and possible plan for how we could quickly, efficiently and cheaply deliver solar to 1 million homes, which would not only help people reduce their energy costs but also help reduce our emissions, which is critical, and the pressures on the grid. Will the Minister taking those proposals on board? We need to get that done.

Turning to a couple of items mentioned by other Government Deputies, there was a reference to cynical finger-pointing at data centres. To be clear, no fingers are being pointed at data centres; what is happening is finger-pointing at successive Governments that have failed to plan or strategically manage these large energy users and, therefore, have failed our communities and our energy grid.

There was also a comment about flood defences.

We absolutely need to ramp up flood defences. We need to make sure that we adapt because climate change is here and it is going to impact on us. We need to adapt our communities for that. Flood defences should not just solely be engineering solutions. We need to look upstream. We need to work with the environment to provide the solutions when it comes to the potential of flooding. That means looking upstream and making sure we are flooding areas that should naturally be flooding and that will actually protect our towns and villages downstream.

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